Houston traffic snarled up more than usual Friday as men, women, and children on horseback and in wagons slowly made their way to NRG Stadium for the 2015 Houston Livestock Show & Rodeo.

Saturday morning our alarm went off at 6 a.m., and we had to leave the dogs aboard Gimme Shelter as we made our annual trek downtown for the Rodeo Run 5k — there’s also a 10k, but Mary and I have never made it that far.

A few of my co-workers made it early enough for a picture near the parade floats before the cowboy hat-wearing volunteers chased us out of the area.

The entry fee for the event goes toward the HLSR Scholarship Fund, which is great, but I think the most interesting part of the Rodeo Run is being able to walk the Houston streets without cars and see things from a different perspective.

Neither of us work downtown, so the only time we see the area is when attending an occasional concert or when we get called for jury duty every two or three years.

As you can probably tell from the fact that I carried a camera the entire time, we just do the 5k walk, and we don’t take it too seriously. We definitely didn’t set any records, but we did finish.

And once the trail riders make their way through the downtown streets …

There’s no forgetting that the rodeo is in town.